


early rituals

by youcouldmakealife



Series: between the teeth [40]
Category: Original Work
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-20
Updated: 2016-05-20
Packaged: 2018-06-09 15:58:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,889
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6913756
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/youcouldmakealife/pseuds/youcouldmakealife
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>David had almost forgotten how it felt to play for a good team.</p>
            </blockquote>





	early rituals

David had almost forgotten how it felt to play for a good team.

David’s doesn't get a single point, the first two games of the preseason. No one on his line — ostensibly the first — has a point. He imagine there’s some discussion about that in the papers, knows he's getting questions about it in postgame interviews, but it’s more muted than he’s used to. The games are meaningless, from a points perspective, the line's a new one, but David doesn't think that's why they're quiet, that it's likely more because the Capitals win both of those games. David wonders how many games the Islanders won without a single point from the Chapman-Kurmazov-Bradley line, or before that, Chapman-Kurmazov-Eisler. He doesn’t think it was very many.

He scores twice in the next game, has an assist on a goal by Oleg, and they win that game too, a veritable rout, three goals from the first, one goal from the second, one from the third, one from the D. It’s against the Islanders, so David probably shouldn’t feel all that great about it, especially when the Verizon Center starts up a ‘Gregoire’ chant, despite the fact that all but one of the goals weren’t his fault. Gregoire played well, too well to deserve the mockery, but he’s not David’s goalie anymore, so he supposes he shouldn’t care.

“How did it feel to score your first goal for the Capitals against the your old team?” he’s asked, after. “How does it feel to score the _game-winning_ goal against your old team?” Other questions along that line, similar enough to blur together.

His first goal, but it doesn’t count until the season start. A game winner, but the game doesn’t mean anything. His old team. That’s what they keep saying, over and over, like he’d forget if they just referred to them as the Islanders.

“It was a preseason game,” David says. “It always feels good to win,” he adds, when apparently that isn’t answer enough. 

David had the game winning goal, but it was a 6-2 final. Even if David’s line hadn’t scored a single goal, the Capitals still would have won the game. He knows what it’s like to be the best on a great team — the Remparts were a force to be reckoned with, and Team Canada medalled both times he played with them. He isn’t unfamiliar with the concept. But with the Islanders, if David or Oleg slumped, the whole team slumped with them, and it’s early, maybe, to make assumptions, but David doesn’t think it’d be the same on the Capitals.

David’s not sure how he feels about it.

*

Every away game they play has lead to a team outing. David isn’t sure if they’re more frequent because the season hasn’t begun in earnest, if it’s an attempt to facilitate bonding before everyone’s exhausted, but it’s a lot more often than David remembers it being on the Islanders. Oleg goes to all of them, so David goes with him, because it wouldn’t be fair if David left him to be one of the only outsiders. There are a few members of the roster that weren’t there last year, but they were playing for the Hershey Bears before, so David imagines they already knew the team. With the big moves Oleg and David required, he supposes there wasn’t a lot of room to make other deals. Everyone seems to know everyone, seems to already get along.

Oleg doesn’t really appear to need him there. He gets along well with Quincy, as far as David can tell, talks a lot to Salonen, who reminds David of Oleg, reserved, quiet, older, and apparently with daughters of his own. Halfway through the first dinner David was caught between them, looking at picture after picture of little girls on their phones. He makes sure not to sit between Oleg and Salonen again, just in case.

In New Jersey David’s already made it to the bar they’re congregating at before he realises Oleg didn’t come along. He frowns, sends Oleg a text. Apparently one of his daughters is sick and was asking for him, so he stayed back to Skype. David wants to go back, but he thinks that would look more conspicuous than if he had never come at all. 

He doesn’t really expect anyone to talk to him — Oleg tends to carry the conversation with whomever, and David sits beside him and says something if he’s asked or it feels right to. There’s a table the Capitals have taken over, but it’s full of a lot of younger guys, around David’s age. David feels more comfortable with teammates around Oleg’s age, finds them less likely to talk about ‘chicks’ and drinking and whatever, and more likely to talk about things David is interested in. And their children, often, but that’s a price David’s willing to pay.

Lombardi’s in the middle of the group at the table, anyway, and David doesn’t really want to sit with him, so he gets a spot at the bar because. It feels less awkward than sitting at the table and probably being ignored. Unless he’s getting teased instead. He doesn’t know what it’d be. Lombardi reminds him of Benson, and David figures it’s safest to avoid him.

David’s probably not being fair: Lombardi hasn’t said anything, David hasn’t exchanged more than an introduction and a few sentences with him, but he has that look, that kind of — that unofficial uniform former USNTDP guys wear when they’re not wearing their hockey uniforms, like they all shop at the same stores, go to the same place to get their hair cut, recycle the same chirps. If Lombardi suddenly came out with ‘stuck up blond bitch’ David wouldn’t be particularly surprised. He’s around David’s age: David doesn’t remember him from Juniors, but he could have been there, could have been in that room, cracking jokes about the pretty boy on Team Canada.

David knows he’s assuming the worst — Jake was part of the program, Jake was on that team, was the _captain_ of that team, and David can’t imagine him calling anyone a stuck up blond bitch, even if they were one. He’s still startled when Lombardi comes up beside him when David’s halfway through his drink. He has a mostly full drink in his hand, so it’s probably not to order, unless he’s ordering for others, so it’d be rude for David to ignore him, noticeable.

“Hi,” David says, cautious.

“Hey,” Lombardi says, “You played in the Q, right?”

“Yeah,” David says, “Remparts.”

“You play with Devon Hines?” Lombardi asks, which wasn’t what David was expecting.

David did play with Devon Hines — David _tutored_ Hines, because jumping from Connecticut to Quebec wreaked havoc on his grades, and apparently David’s Ontarian French was easier for him to get, maybe just because it wasn’t the rapidfire Quebecois that even David often lost the thread of. David liked Hines well enough. He hasn’t seen him since he left the Remparts: he’s fairly sure Hines was drafted a year ahead of him, but it wasn’t high, and he doesn’t know if Hines is in the AHL or washed out entirely.

It occurs to him that he can ask. “He’s with the Wolf Pack,” Lombardi says. “Figured I’d call him to see if he’s in town when we hit up Hartford Sunday, if you want to tag along.”

“Maybe,” David says. “If I wouldn’t be intruding.”

“As long as you’re cool listening to a bunch of boring stories about the mullet I had when I was sixteen,” Lombardi says.

“How many stories can you have about a mullet?” David asks.

Lombardi laughs. “If you’re Hinesy, like, twelve. If you’ve got any really awful stories from Quebec, I could use the ammo.”

That makes more sense: finding humiliating stories from every source you can get. Pretend to invite someone along so you can get that ammunition. David imagines that if he asks, Sunday, Lombardi will say Hines isn’t in town. “Sorry,” David says. “I can’t think of anything.”

Lombardi shrugs. “Let me know if you think of any.”

“Did you play U18 for the US?” David asks. “Or U20?”

“World Juniors?” Lombardi asks. “I fucking wish, I was like 5’8” until I hit eighteen, then I had college shit. Why?”

“No reason,” David says. “Just thought you looked familiar.”

*

Their final preseason game is in Hartford, and at practice the day of, Lombardi skates over to him when he goes to grab his water bottle, asks, “Still want to see Hinesy?” 

David blinks at him twice. “Sure,” he says. “He’s in town?”

“Yeah,” Lombardi says. “Grab some lunch after practice?”

“Okay,” David says.

Hines meets them for lunch at a restaurant near the facility. He looks surprised to see David, but David doesn’t think he looks unhappy about it. “Holy shit, you’re alive,” he says, and Lombardi says “Told you,” as if that makes any sense.

Hines doesn’t have a dozen stories about Lombardi’s hair at sixteen, but he does bring it up, pulls out his phone, says “Wait, I have a picture,” which cues Lombardi diving across the table, presumably in an attempt to block him from showing David. They touch a lot in general — David’s sitting beside Lombardi, but even thought they’re separated by a table, him and Hines keep shoving at one another.

At one point David gets kicked in the shin, and when he startles Hines says, “Shit, was aiming for Robbie, my bad.”

He repeats it in French: not verbatim, but a general apology, then asks David some simple questions on how he is, still in French. David guesses he wants the practice. He sounds rusty, but David’s probably rusty as well, so he has no room to judge. 

“Canadian bullshit,” Lombardi says, after Hines has exchanged a few sentences with David, and David tenses, but Hines responds with “Excuse you, Mr. speaks Italian to look fancy”, and David’s mostly forgotten it by the time they’ve stopped wielding butter knives at one another.

It’s ridiculous: they’re both older than David and yet David feels like he’s back in the Q, tuning out arguments so he could study. Hines was usually sitting beside him, doing the same, unless the arguments were in English, and then he’d always join in. David had thought, at the time, that the only reason Hines didn’t join all of them was that he didn’t understand French well enough to follow the thread of the argument in the first place. He thinks he might have been right, but it doesn’t bother him as much as it did when he was seventeen.

After lunch David and Lombardi share a cab back to the hotel. “Good to see Hinesy, huh?” Lombardi asks.

“It was,” David agrees. 

“Who knows, maybe the Rangers call him up, we get to play him, buy the loser a drink,” Lombardi says.

It’s not likely. David looked Hines up after his conversation with Lombardi, and he’s pulling second line minutes with the Wolf Pack, getting third line points. He’d have to leapfrog a half dozen players to make the NHL again, even if the Rangers suffer a rash of injuries, and at twenty-four, it’s really not particularly likely.

“I hope so,” David says, quirks his mouth up in response to the sharp edge of Lombardi’s grin.


End file.
